Prior to writing fiction, Kovac worked in television news, covering crime and politics at Fox 5’s Ten O’Clock News in Washington, DC, and after that as a news producer and desk editor at the Washington Bureau of NBC News.
She lives outside Washington DC with her family. She loves morning writes with her cat on her lap, book hauls from her town library, and hiking national parks. Her favorites—C&O Canal National Park, Assateague Island, and Rock Creek Park—provided inspiration for Watch Us Fall. She’s currently at work on her third novel.
Kovac applied the Page 69 Test to Watch Us Fall and reported the following:
From page 69, which takes place at a dinner party, where Josh Egan first meets Addie’s friends:Visit Christina Kovac's website.Their conversations flew fast, skipping easily between movies and books and music, stories half told and finished by each other. He felt a little dazzled by them. Estella refilled his wine. “Tell Josh about the Obama niece, Lucy.”Here Josh finds the four friends fiercely protective of each other, willing to do whatever it takes to keep each other safe. In this case, it’s Addie’s vulnerability to helping broken people. This page is actually representative of the themes of the novel—friendship and obsessive love and how far we’ll go to protect each other, as well as the shifting, conflicting stories we tell, and the delusions this creates. It is also part of a pivotal scene in the novel. And we see the love and humor and history the women share with each other.
“Let’s not,” Lucy said.
Josh thanked her for the wine. Then, to Lucy: “Does President Obama have a niece?”
“Oh God, no, this is embarrassing,” Addie said, laughing, and Josh squeezed her hand saying, “Well now somebody has to tell it.”
Estella tossed her hair. “It was Addie’s alter ego in college.”
“We’d go to parties and guys would hit on Addie,” Lucy said. “She could never kick free of this certain type of guy that always gravitated to her.”
Estella interrupted. “The saddest, drunkest, most pathetic...”
Penelope lifted her eyebrows. “These guys would ask for Addie’s number, and she’d crumble, afraid to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
“Who likes hurting people?” Addie asked.
Estella pointed her fork at Lucy. “So Lucy developed her alias. Alter ego, whatever. Remember that first guy hounding Addie for her Instagram handle? So Lucy moves in with something to the effect of, ‘I’m sorry, but she’s under orders from the Secret Service to observe a strict social media blackout. I’m sure you can understand... her uncle, you know?’”
“I was thinking, play her off as some foreign dignitary’s kid,” Lucy said. “The university is lousy with them. But the guy assumed President Obama, so.”
Addie was shaking her head, laughing. “I never said anything about President Obama. I never gave any name. He just said I looked just like my uncle and then everyone started agreeing, and it took off from there.”
“You look nothing like President Obama,” Josh said.
“We were treated so nicely after that, remember?” Penelope said.
The novel uses two points-of-views: Lucy’s in present-day narration that begins on the day Josh goes missing, and Josh’s in the past month’s events leading up to that terrible day.
This page is from Josh’s point-of-view. He doesn’t understand their inside stories. As a celebrity journalist (a la Ronan Farrow with a bit of a JFK Jr. mystique), Josh has firm thoughts about truth and lies. For his own traumatic reasons, he’s afraid them. Lies are a Josh Egan trigger.
And here, on page 69, the woman he’s obsessively in love with is laughing with her friends about lies they so easily tell. He will come to wonder about other lies. Soon after that, Josh disappears.
My Book, The Movie: The Cutaway.
The Page 69 Test: The Cutaway.
Writers Read: Christina Kovac (March 2017).
My Book, The Movie: Watch Us Fall.
--Marshal Zeringue
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